


The Lindworm

by Farla



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: BTF, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Lindworm, Mythical Beings & Creatures, POV Alternating, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, POV Jaskier | Dandelion, Rashomon-Adjacent, rbtp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 6,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27123871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farla/pseuds/Farla
Summary: "Yes, yes, rampaging monster, hire a witcher, but how did it end with the whole profession banned from the country?"
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Other Witcher(s), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Roach
Comments: 54
Kudos: 26
Collections: Sordid Saovine - The Witcher Halloween Event





	1. Chapter 1

As soon as he enters, Jaskier's eye catches on the dour figure sitting at a table in the back corner, brooding over a drink.

Jaskier's twice the age he was when encountered his first witcher. He's changed enormously as a person with age and experience.

He plunks down on the bench next to the man, scooches in a bit more for emphasis, and beams at him.

The man's already stiff posture stiffens further and his face starts rearranging itself into what Jaskier can now recognize is a carefully crafted glower designed to make the other.person back up. Jaskier gives it an six out of ten: intimidating, he'll grant, but far too similar to Geralt's in a way that makes the artificiality of it more obvious - is making a scary face one of the lessons of witchering? don't either of them know you should add a bit of your own flair to these things? - and it's lacking that crucial chip-on-the-shoulder spice that says the person has been looking for an excuse to hurt someone and is happy to find you volunteered. You don't want _back off or I'll hurt you_ if you actually want to convince people to bolt, you want the firm threat of _I'm going to hurt you_ to get people moving before they've even consciously registered it.

"Oh, no need for all that, my good witcher," Jaskier says. "I'm -"

"Jaskier," Geralt says, grabbing him by the collar and tugging him off the bench.

"Geralt," the witcher says.

Geralt releases Jaskier and Jaskier tries sitting again, this time on the bench on the opposite side of the table. He waits for Geralt to reply with the other witcher's name and complete the introductions. Instead, Geralt stands there for a minute in a way Jaskier might describe as awkward if it wasn't normal, then says, "Saw you got a konik pony. Those are a good -" 

"Fuck you, Geralt."

"Pony?" Jaskier says. The man is Geralt-sized, and Jaskier would hazard he's likely Geralt-weight as well. Not only that, but if Geralt can be believed, it's against witcher code to travel light and Geralt's pile of gear wasn't just down to him and his whole 'Butcher of Blaviken' problem meaning he couldn't be sure of a friendly reception at towns. Geralt's kept it up for two decades now, long after Jaskier improved his reputation, so it really does seem plausible there's actually some witcher preparedness guild rule. "Are - are konik ponies..." He trails off. It's within the realm of possibility Geralt was doing the thing where he's sarcastic without sounding sarcastic and konik ponies are horrible, and now if Jaskier says something this unknown witcher will think he's joining in on the insult.

Is he Geralt's enemy? Do witchers hate other witchers? Jaskier is sure - well, mostly sure Geralt would've mentioned that by now. Is this particular witcher some sort of evil witcher? If so, _why did Geralt let Jaskier sit ba_ _ck down?_ He's still well within skewering distance and the witcher's swords are right there. Not that he doubts Geralt's ability, he'll bet on Geralt winning any fight, but possibly Geralt is overestimating Jaskier's own ability to avoid the opening swordblow given Geralt thinks nothing of catching arrows midair.

"Konik ponies?" Jaskier repeats. "I - I don't know anything about ponies. They're...?"

The man has not broken eye contact with Geralt. "Not. Tarpan," the other witcher growls. 

Geralt sighs.

"And, and those are a, pony? Horse? What's the difference between a pony and a horse anyway, is any sort of horse a pony if it's short? Is that what ponies are, the runtier horses of the litter? Or, is there such a thing as a giant pony? Are koniks giant? Tarpans?"

"This is the bard," the man says.

"The bard," Geralt says, and there is no call for him sounding so put-upon. Jaskier is a _ray of sunshine_.

"The bard," Jaskier agrees. "Now, I'm sure this whole pony-konik-tarpan business would be simply fascinating if either of you would explain a bit of context. And perhaps your name...?"

The man slowly turns from Geralt to regard Jaskier. "The bard," he repeats.

"Yes, the bard," Jaskier says, hoping that's now established to everyone's satisfaction. "And as a bard I love a good story. I'd be quite interested in hearing about any of your own, uh, Mr...?" he fishes.

The silence stretches a bit. "Karon," the witcher says finally.

"Karon! Yes. I would be delighted to immortalize y-"

"No," Karon interrupts. Witchers! It's like they _want_ to be sulky and miserable and unknown. "But," he continues slowly in a low and wonderfully threatening rumble of a voice, "I'll tell you what _Geralt_ did. I haven't heard one song about mention it, so he must not have told you the story."

"I believe he didn't!" Jaskier agrees. "I would be in your debt, noble Karon."

"I'm sorry," Geralt says. "We all make mistakes, you know I didn't mean for -"

"Shush," Jaskier says, patting the wooden bench beside him. "There's no need to just keep standing there. Unless you're planning to get us more drinks." Geralt sighs and sits. "Please continue. Now, what terrible thing did Geralt do?"

"Geralt married a snake."

Jaskier laughs. "Geralt! You married Yennefer and didn't tell me?"

"Snakes don't have limbs, Karon," Geralt says. He's slumped and buried his face in his hands.

"Wait," Jaskier says, a bit concerned, "you didn't actually marry Yennefer, did you?"


	2. Chapter 2

Geralt wasn't sure what to expect from Yaclain.

He can hear a voice in his head, a low disappointed growl, telling him, "Stop expecting things." 

"I don't know how I'm supposed to do that," he tells Roach as they walk. "A good witcher is prepared. You think about all the things that could happen. The monster could be this or that, it could do this or that. But I'm not supposed to wonder about anything else? About places? I can't only care about some of it."

Roach breathes encouragingly.

"Yaclain," Geralt continues thoughtfully. "Really mountainous, even more than it's been so far. We'll have to be careful that you can make it on the steeper paths. Probably full of tiny valleys with tiny villages. Alfie told me the less people travel the more different the places get, and you won't know until you get there, remember?" Alfie had said to stay near busy areas for the first few years, even though the bustle and stink were awful, because you'd know what you could expect from the people. "They could really, really hate witchers. But they might not, too. Won't know until we get there, right?" A fly tries to land on Roach's neck and he swats it.

Geralt runs over what he knows again. "That blacksmith said most of their crops were wrecked last year by a monster. It sounds like maybe it was poison, to ruin so much so thoroughly." He wishes he had a better idea what the situation is, but people...most of the time, they'll talk to him about the problem they're hiring him for. They're not always very good at telling him what's going on, but they want him to fix it, so they have a reason to say what they know. But if they don't have anything they need to tell him, and the problems of another country aren't anything you need to talk to a witcher about, then usually, they won't. Or there will be someone who'll look at him like, like he's somebody they'd be willing talk with, but then when they do someone else stomps over all angry and... That's how it is and it's how everyone told him it'd be and he can't change it. It'd be better if more people talked to him, but they're not going to, so he needs to focus on handling how things are and stop wanting things to be different. "If they lose a second year's crop, they'll starve for sure. They might be willing to pay a lot to stop the monster from destroying the fields again. And they might have very little to pay with," he adds, "which isn't great. I know, I know. But they'll need it gone so they'll pay something. They must not hate witchers, because I know Karon's been there a couple times, but -"

He hears a cart ahead and goes quiet. Humans have worse hearing than he does, so the driver won't have heard him yet, but he doesn't have a handle yet on how much worse and how much closer they have to be when they will start being able to hear him. Better safe than sorry.

Probably they'll just think it's weird, him talking to his horse. But what if they think he's talking to her because she's not a regular horse but a mutant like him? No one's been mean to Roach so far and he doesn't want to do anything to ruin that.

He stops her and gets into the saddle.

The cart's slower, so they're going to overtake it. When that happens, it's best if they're moving a lot faster so they can pass it quickly if they need to. The driver might not want Geralt around, and if he gets on Roach right then and makes her go faster, the driver might get mad about that too. Just because someone wants Geralt to go away doesn't mean they're okay with him wanting to get away from them. And if the driver doesn't mind Geralt, then he can always slow down and ask if they know anything about the monster.

It turns out good he was prepared because the man spits when he gets near. That's what he knew would probably happen, it's why he's on Roach.

When they're far enough away again that he can barely hear the cart, he gets off her again.

"So, Karon talked about it, so I know it's not somewhere that tries to ban witchers or anything like that. But I think they might not like witchers much either. You saw the mules pulling the cart, Roach? The pony Karon got here looked more like them than a real pony. And she tried to bite me," he whines. "Me!"

Roach noses him.

"I _know_ ," he tells Roach. "You know I'd never do something worth biting me over. She'd even seen me take care of his horse first, and she still did that! And Vesemir told me that was the fourth one, and that the other three were just as bad, but he only gets those. But if that's the worst thing they do to witchers, then..." It seems wrong to describe people only cheating you as good but that really would be among the best receptions he'd had. Maybe the people in Yaclain were nice to Karon otherwise and that's why he goes back to keep giving them his money for their horribly trained wrong-boned ponies. "If they try to insist I buy some ugly wild biter too, I'll say I've got you and you carry everything just fine. Don't you, Roach? And if they _really_ insist, you're faster than a pony too."


	3. Chapter 3

Karon digresses from some actually quite good descriptions of the mountains of Yaclain to describing in much greater detail how surefooted the local ponies were in traveling those mountains and any other mountain, in any weather, even really hard to traverse ground like mountain passes full of snow. Jaskier is not sure what monster witchers fight where that's likely to come up as often as Karon seems to imply. Maybe there's a snow monster that can make that happen? Karon continues to describe their heartiness, and the shape and slant of their hooves, and how his sweet little Pola spun and kicked a man's head in with those hooves, because witchers have their own, very wrong, ideas about what "sweet" means. Jaskier assumed at that point they'd be getting back to the snake thing only for the witcher to start in on describing the wonderful striping their coats had and how the fur right over their faces was the warmest most velvety dark and their thick manes were white-tipped like they were touched by frost, and...

"They sound like the quite the beast," Jaskier interjects, hoping that if he sounds sufficiently convinced Karon will stop. "I can understand why it's so hard to convince the locals to part with them."

"They're wild animals. The locals use them when they don't have anything better," Geralt says wearily. He's still holding his head in his hands, looking comically despondent about all of it.

"You don't appreciate their spirit and intelligence."

"Karon, the reason you can't get them anywhere else is _because no one else on the continent wants them_."

"Fuck you, Geralt," Karon says again.


	4. Chapter 4

Geralt doesn't stop at the next few villages, or the next one after he gets past the border, or the next few after that. "Not much point, right Roach?" he tells her. "A little village isn't where I'll get paid for dealing with a monster attacking all over the country, and if I bother them they might think I do expect them to be the ones to pay." It would be nice to go somewhere with a roof and a bed, but he should hurry and find somewhere he can learn about this monster first.

And it's not that many days before he reaches a town big enough he might have better luck with his reception.

He gets back on Roach, just in case, but the first people who see him look...well, not happy, exactly, but like he's something that could be useful.

There's a monster. They call it a dragon but say it can't fly and has no wings, so, not a dragon but a lizard of some kind, unless it's a mutant one. There's a bit of dispute about the size but as it got into the castle once already and those walls are thirty feet, it's forty at the lowest.

"The castle?" Geralt repeats.

"Aye. At the prince's wedding. When the prince was to be married, it crawled into the castle and ate the groom and bride right up. The new queen summoned the thing, you see, for now it's her son who'll inherit the throne next."

"And that'd be none of our business," puts in a woman, "if only she could've sent it away again, instead of letting it free to torment the rest of us. And now they're demanding we give up someone to be fed to the monster! Well, castle's still got a king and queen right there, hasn't it?"

This is not going in a direction Geralt is comfortable with, so he asks about what exactly the monster does.

It turns out the monster doesn't destroy crops with poison, it turns the crops to poison. Its breath can kill animals, and if it breathes on plants then any who eat them sicken. He doubts the mixup is accidental: tainted crops are a lot worse to admit to than ones that are cleanly destroyed and gone.

Geralt considers the man telling him this, then the others in the tavern. They're all somewhat grey, and terribly sluggish, more so than could be explained by the thinness.

Anemic.

"Do the contaminated plants kill humans who eat them as quickly as most animals?"

"No," the man tells him. "There haven't been many deaths. But we've lost all the livestock, and if this keeps going it'll be poison or starvation for us." And others. They'll try to sell off whatever they can to people who don't know what it is in the hopes of having enough to make it through the winter. It's a slow enough poisoning that people will have a while to realize it in time, but it's also slow enough it can be hard to identify the real cause.

"All the cats and dogs are dead too," a woman adds. "They'd eat the rats and die of it."

The lack of cats had been explicable, some places had ones nervy enough they didn't stick around long enough for even a bit of hissing, but that did explain why he hadn't so much as heard a bark this whole time. He wonders if he could've figured this all out without talking to anyone at all.

"And anywhere it's been smells like a cartload of crushed onions?" he says, just to be sure.


	5. Chapter 5

"A lindworm," Geralt corrects. "Not linnorm."

"They're not a damn dragon. A _linnorm_ is a giant snake monster."

"Snakes don't have limbs."

"Mieszko did not cart that pickled python all the way home just for you to pretend you never saw it."

Jaskier perks up. "Home?" Geralt's never mentioned anything about that.

The two witchers go deathly still. The silence stretches out, and out, and then Geralt resumes as if Jaskier hadn't spoken, "It had some very small hornlike growths, and that might've just been a viral cancer, unless you're also going to argue horned rabbits prove they're a type of deer."

There's a momentary hesitation from Karon, then he says, "No one's seen that in snakes, unless _you're_ saying rabbits are reptiles."

"That python could have been us seeing the infection in snakes. And regardless of why it had them, tiny keratinous growths are not the same as having limbs. Furthermore, if those had been limbs, which they were not, they were clearly on the snake's hindquarters."

"I uh, I don't think snakes have those, Geralt," Jaskier says.

Undeterred, Geralt continues, "A lind _worm_ has forelimbs."

"A _dragon_ has six limbs," Karon retorts.

"I'm not claiming a lind _worm_ should be considered a true dragon, but they're more a lizard than a snake. It was adjacently draconic. And it breathed poison. Snakes can't do that."

"Six limbs," Karon repeats. "A lin _norm_ is lacking four compared to a dragon, but it has only two more than a normal snake. It's simple math. Four is a bigger number than two."

"Well, it did have four limbs."

"Because that one had two heads!"


	6. Chapter 6

"It should have been killed at the time," the king says. "I realize that. But my first wife... After her first child, my son Szczęsny, she lost the second, and the third, and the fourth. So when she finally birthed something living again, even if it was a monster... She couldn't bear the thought of anyone harming it. She believed it was her child, even calling it a prince, to her dying day."

"I insisted it be killed," the current queen says. "As soon as I saw that horrid thing! I can't describe how disgusting it was, Witcher. But as soon as its flesh was cut its poisoned blood killed the men, and then it escaped."

"And that... It's not that we thought that to be the end of it, but we could find no sign of the creature." They absolutely though that was the end of it, Geralt knows. "And then came Szczęsny's wedding. The monster tore its way into the hall, insisting it was a royal prince and that it was not _fair_ ," the king spits, "that its brother should get a wife and it not. And it ate them both."

"It coiled there like a fat maggot, demanding we bring it a wife. With Szczęsny's blood still on its mouth!"

"I said no, Witcher. And it said it'd be back after the winter to see if it had changed my mind."

"So we did," the queen says. "Of course we did, after it poisoned half the country. A condemned woman. We're not monsters. She was a criminal. But when she saw the monster she said she'd rather the noose after all, and that thing demands a proper ceremony. The bride must be willing, or willing enough, to actually marry the beast before her before it's satisfied. Every three days it comes and asks. We've been putting it off ever since, and sooner or later it'll run out of patience. And certainly my own child will not survive any wedding night of his own."

"If they know there's a witcher waiting to kill the thing after they say their vows, we might be able to find someone willing," the king says.

"Oh, no, ah, no," Geralt says. "I could stop it from eating her, but not from killing her. No human can survive being close to an injured lindworm."

It turns out this is not an issue.

"The marriage contract breaks once the bride dies," Geralt tries next. "And then the lindworm will leave, and be back to demanding another one. It's got to be me alone."

The queen nods. "That would spare both the woman and the time it'd take to find one. It'll be back again tonight. Can you get it done, or do you need to make preparations?"

"I just need to be paid first."

Which is how Geralt comes to be waiting in the hall with a trembling priest.

The lindworm that slithers in has two heads. Not two full heads - there's four eyes, two tiny noses, and below that they melt together to produce a single maw that Geralt estimates is indeed wide enough to swallow even a witcher whole.

"Twins," Geralt breathes.

Perhaps that's why the creature coiled before him is unusually enormous. Their arms, human-sized, look especially tiny next to all that bulk. Two of them, on the outer sides, move freely, and the only exposed parts of the other two are the hands poking out of the smooth, glistening underside.

Unlike a snake, Geralt knows that if he touched there, he'd feel damp under his fingers, the rich, moist living skin exposed by the constant rub from slithering over the ground. All over the rest of it flutter thin, papery sheets of half-shed skin like a tattered cloak. The lindworm pays no more mind to intentionally cleaning the dried skin off than their mother did husking the onions before she swallowed them.

You'd really think lindworms were largely a deliberate thing, since they could certainly be useful, but no, from the records of other witchers Geralt knows it's most often that their seller didn't think there was any need to explicitly tell them to peel off the dry parts of the onion before eating it. Then too many layers going in means too many layers coming out, and someone without the sense to skin the onion isn't going to know to skin their newborn child.

Far at the other end is the tail, split apart to look like a ragged broom. The roots. A lindworm that reaches soil soaks up what happens on it. They wouldn't have a good idea what was said and done atop the stone floors of the castle and similar places off the ground, but most of the country's gossip was done on the earth. That's how they'd learned about their brother's wedding.

"You're my bride?" the lindworm asks.

The king and queen suggested a dress and veil, to drape him in enough layers that the lindworm would have no idea what they'd sent until afterward.

"I'm your bride," he says, in full armor with a sword strapped to his back, his eyes weeping black from the potion.

"Yay!" the lindworm says, a long greenish yellow tongue flickering in and out between hundreds of tiny needle teeth. "You're big. The other two were so bony."


	7. Chapter 7

"...so what was the wedding dress like? Because I know playing the proper part of the bride is important for these things and white is the most bridal of colors, but..." Jaskier, momentarily struggling with words that can do justice to just how washed out Geralt is, finds himself waving a hand at the man. "Well, there's simply only so much white the eye can take. Unless giving it out of season snowblindness was part of the plan."

"Sadly," Karon drawls, "Geralt never said a word about the color of dress he was wearing."

Geralt sighs like this conversation is physically painful for him.

A puzzle for him, then! "No, no, perhaps I can guess. You'd have a royal tailor on hand, so it wouldn't be just any old thing... Now, dark colors pair well with how bright your eyes are but that's a bit, well, dark for a wedding."

Karon looks thrown, because apparently not considering fashion is a general witcher thing. "The linnorm intended to eat him," Karon says.

Jaskier nods. "Good point. So not only are darks out, but probably you'd want to go more pastel, even, to keep it from seeming too morbid, but then the white hair...hm, but you wouldn't exactly want white hair on a bride either, would you? It occurs to me that it might be easier to just fix the hair. And we've established black is out, so a strong blond or warm brown." He considers Geralt. "In general, I think brown would look better on you, but for a wedding intended to end in a funeral, a sunny blond might be just the thing. Am I right?"

Geralt's sigh is even deeper than the last. He hasn't a leg to stand on when he says Jaskier's dramatic. "The lindworm didn't understand what a bride is."

"But no one else knew that," Karon says.

"I know," Geralt says.

"Extra cloth's always useful."

"I know."

"You could've insisted on silk, too."

" _I know._ "

"And armor's expensive."

"I didn't think taking it off meant I'd actually lose it!"

"You don't think," Karon agrees.

"Karon, _I was -_ " Geralt stops and glances at Jaskier, who tries his best not to bounce in anticipation. "It was a long time ago," he grits out.

"Half a year of being a witcher should've been enough," Karon says. Geralt winces.

"Wait but...then..." Jaskier tries to make sense of all this. "But if Geralt turned witchers into persona non grata over there when he was a young witcher, and he's older than you, how do you know the place so well?"

Karon choke-snorts on his drink. "Older than - this fucking infant? Gods, Geralt, is there anything you won't lie to humans about? I remember how you used to whine at everyone about the littlest lies, and now look at you!"

"I didn't tell him anything like that. I tell him about fights with monsters. I don't tell him about _witchers_ ," Geralt says. "And _witcher things_."

"Is it really a _witcher thing_? It's more of a _you_ thing."

"Karon." Geralt sounds like he's pleading.

Karon considers and for a moment it seems like whatever Geralt is getting at has convinced him to drop the subject. But then he starts talking again. "Witcher things!" Karon mocks. "He starting greying early and his vanity's never recovered. That's why he's acting like it's some grand secret of ours. Your White Wolf's going to be the Bald Wolf next, just you wait."


	8. Chapter 8

"So," Geralt tells the lindworm, putting everything he has into sounding both authoritative and friendly. Any hostility, any ounce of meanness, and the lindworm will respond in kind and then some. And if he doesn't sound convincing enough, if the lindworm refuses... "The first thing to do after a wedding is play a game." He pulls out his cards. "As your bride, I'll teach you how to play. Every time one of us loses, we have to take off a layer of skin." He ruffles the armor on his shoulder, then pats one of the fluttering bits on the lindworm's back. "Like one of these."

"Yeeeeeeeeeees," the lindworm says slowly. "That sounds right. Yes. We play games. Cards. Those are cards. Those are a game. Yes."

He tries not to show any sign of his relief. This is actually working, and he's not going to mess up when he's this close by doing anything to make the lindworm suspicious.

At Geralt's fourth win, the lindworm, having cleaned off the dried skins, digs into the next layer. Oily ichor sprays out. Geralt's eyes sting immediately and he chokes down a curse as he screws them shut. He'd known the fumes were bad enough to affect even witchers, but he'd thought it'd take time to build up, like cutting onions back when he was a kid. Now even with his eyes closed and viscous black tears starting to flow down his face, he can feel the burn getting worse.

It's going to be a long, long night.


	9. Chapter 9

"How could he be able to keep playing if the fumes are blinding?" Jaskier asks suspiciously.

"...I was distinguishing them by touch," Geralt admits.

"I knew it! I knew you cheated at Gwent somehow!"

"Well," Karon hedges, "I wouldn't say it's cheating, exactly, they get battered and it's just we're better at -"

" _All witchers cheat at Gwent_?" Jaskier says in horror. "Is nothing sacred to you people?"

"Jaskier, I've seen you stow half a deck up your sleeves."

"That's an accepted part of the game! Anyone can do that!"


	10. Chapter 10

Another slap-thump of skin hitting the ground. It doesn't take that long. Layer by layer, the lindworm is shrinking.

Geralt pats the lindworm, who responds with a confused flail that smacks him in the face with one dripping hand. He wipes the slime off with an increasingly sodden bit of blanket so he won't swallow anything when he opens his mouth to say, "You're doing great." The lindworm is down to about as wide around as Roach.

"I lost again."

"Losing is just part of learning how to play," Geralt tells them. "And it's fun whether you win or lose." If he could see, he might be able to manage it now, but he doesn't trust himself to do it blind, and it has to be done in a single cut because the lindworm will fight once they realize they're attacked. Even if he proves skilled enough to try to carve someone loose during the following battle instead of accidentally running them through, it'd be a matter of some _one_. And this is twins.

He plays through another game.

Another game.

Another game.

And then finally he hears choking and gasping.

A lindworm can't get the last skin off, because what's underneath is human. But there's a brief window of time before the poison gets them and if you act quickly... He pulls his sword loose, slices down the center, and reaches into the burning slime to feel human flesh under each hand. He yanks and feels them come free. He kicks the door open, drags them down the hall out of the worst of the fumes. There's a waiting trough of water at the end, and he drops into it with one under either arm.


	11. Chapter 11

"Now, a linnorm is a hard fight taken straight on, with the ridiculous bulk of them, and the fact you'll end up blinded as soon as you cut into them, and how they can't feel pain so you can't even get them to flinch, and it is absolutely right we be compensated extensively given that. But. That said, they're not that hard to kill if you know what you're doing and things line up right. It's easy to talk them into things and it only takes losing a couple skins to get one disoriented enough for an easy beheading. You don't need to try to get them to skin themselves all the way down."

"But wouldn't that, ah, kill the person?"

"It would. Which was what Geralt agreed to do, if he was paying attention."

"Right. But. Uh. That..."

"I'm not saying it's never worth trying to save somebody," Karon continues. "Some peasant's kid, that's one thing. That could be your brother. But this was a royal fucking snake, Geralt. Can you name one time - one! - that anything involving nobles has ended well for us?"

"Er, well -" Jaskier starts.

Karon thumps a fist on the table. "Exactly! Do you know what he said, Bard?" Karon demands. "How was he supposed to know! That's what he said to us. How was he supposed to know? It's the fucking nobility! You assume!"

"Karon, I really am sorry about the ponies," Geralt says.

"But no. So, and without even thinking to go back and get his armor first, this idiot brings out the children of the old queen who caused this mess, the _now eldest_ children of the old queen _, both of which_ he is **_still fucking married to_**."


	12. Chapter 12

  
Witchers train to handle themselves without relying on their eyes for a lot of reasons. Could be that you're fighting in the depth of a cave, could be illusions, could be you've got blood or dirt or both in your eyes, could be you're unusually poisoned, could be you've taken a particularly bad blow to the head. So this is fine.

He also can't smell, of course, since lindworm ichor overpowers everything, and his sense of touch is a bit dulled by the tingling of long exposure, just enough that trying to feel open spaces by airflow is out, but he can hear fine, and witchers know to always pay attention to the lay of the land and always pay more attention to the lay of a castle.

And his clothes are all still more soaked in poison than is safe, so he might've jumped in the moat anyway. He wouldn't have had to jump off the wall first, but he'd still probably have gone in the moat. It's not even difficult to swim since he had to take off his armor during the game. And by the time his clothes are clean enough to go to Roach, his eyesight will be back to normal.

He hears the thunk as an arrow sinks into the soil of the bank a few feet away. It's fine. It's still night and they can't see him under the water and he can hold his breath for ages. It's fine.


	13. Chapter 13

"That was surprisingly productive!" Jaskier says after Karon's left. "I have enough for a song about a linnorm -"

" _Jaskier._ "

" - and enough for two dozen about tarpan ponies. He really painted quite the picture, didn't he? Fierce and bold-hearted, giving their loyalty only to those who deserve it. Fighting side by side with their master, following him faithfully up mountains through ice and snow..."

"They're actually quite prone to running off."

"Truly noble and majestic creatures," Jaskier continues, undeterred. "It's practically my duty to spread the world of their beauty, strength, and courage. I think I could make them into _fashion_ , Geralt."

"You could do that," he admits, and Jaskier preens a bit. "But," Geralt adds, "those people will find out the 'noble creatures' of your song eat noble fingers."

"Oh, I knew a nobleman who kept a riding bear. The sort of person who procures an animal because it sounds impressive in a song is the sort who has people to actually deal with it. The trick, according to the man who cared for the bear, was to feed it until it hadn't room left to swallow the tip of a pinky. These can't be worse than bears. And they make for a much better gift than one!"

"I'm the one who'll be given one," Geralt says. "Even if you name Karon as the witcher who wants them, it'll be me. And they'll be offended if I say I want money for killing a monster and not to be given a wild animal."

"You deprived that poor man of these wonderful creatures for, I'm going to guess decades? Decades," Jaskier says. "Surely traveling with one...or possibly several, plan for success after all...for a bit isn't so bad."

"Have you ever encountered a wild pony wearing a bridle, Jaskier? You wouldn't think that much hate could fit in a skin."

"That's not what Karon says."

"It's this whole thing he has about... He liked that they don't start off liking anybody, and that they'll always do what they want over what you want. And he liked that getting them to like him didn't make them one drop more positive about anybody else. And even that would take him months. Months, Jaskier."

"Well, what was your plan?"

"Countries only ban witchers until another monster shows up."

"That doesn't seem to have worked."

"It _did_ ," Geralt says, petulant. "Unfortunately, Remus didn't get some first in case he was kicked out as soon as he'd finished, because no one wants to be around them longer than they have to, and Basil, the prick, refused to get any because he thought Karon needed to get over it."

"So we're agreed! Your way, as usual, is terrible and I don't know what you were thinking, so I shall solve your problem myself. So, Remus, Basil... And a Mieszko. More friends of yours?"

"They're dead." Which rather brings down the mood, and has definitely sharply recontextualized the fact Jaskier has never heard Geralt talk about them before. Though he didn't mention Karon who's proved himself still alive either, so maybe it's just bad luck? Jaskier's not sure what to say - apologize? suggest again that maybe talking about things for once might actually help? shut up? - when Geralt speaks again. "Fine. Sing about the virtues of wild ponies to everyone, then."

"I shall! As a special favor to you both. Now that I've fixed things between the two of you -"

"You haven't."

"- Now that I've fixed things between the two of you, I think that the thing to do if someone else tells an embarrassing story about you is to respond in kind. Which is to say, surely you know some story of Karon's mistakes you could share?"

"No."

Jaskier considers teasing him about being the prematurely white wolf, but if Jaskier's guess is right that was some lie and he'd be reminding Geralt that Karon did keep from blabbing, not riling him up against the other man. Some other monster hunt that went wrong, Jaskier figures is most likely. He doesn't know why Geralt doesn't want to talk about how he got some of his scars because Geralt doesn't talk about them, so the cause of his white hair could be the same sort of thing. No, he probably doesn't have any real leverage in that respect. This requires a different tactic... "You're always complaining about people not knowing enough about monsters," Jaskier wheedles.

"Hm," Geralt says. "Perhaps Karon will indulge you if your songs actually do get him his ponies."

"I'll call it a lindworm in the song."

Jaskier watches a ferocious internal battle play out across Geralt's face. He waits.

"Don't use his name," Geralt says at last. "But there was this one time..."

**Author's Note:**

> I welcome comments and I really do mean that. Do you want to say something you are absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure I can't possibly want to hear? Tell me anyway!


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